On Wednesday morning Shaher and I left Nablus through the Hawara checkpoint, picked up my rental car from his friend's house, and sat with his friend to have some coffee and tea. Again, his friend expressed interest in having PfP build a playground in their village. We left to drop off Shaher at the Kalandia checkpoint and meet Muhammed in Ramallah so that Muhammed and I could visit the site at Beit Anan.
The drive to Beit Anan was a long one, not because of the distance (it is only 12 kilometers from Ramallah), but because of the poor roads along the way. Muhammed told me that these roads were built in the 1950's by the Jordanian authorities when the West Bank was controlled by Jordan (before the 1967 war and the Israeli occupation of that area began). We reached Beit Anan in the early afternoon and met with Naji, an official in the municipality. We spent some time discussing the depth of the holes, and then he led us to the site.
The site for this playground is absolutely gorgeous, as it sits connected to a school and overlooks the neighboring mountains and valleys. This space is large, and the municipality has plans to make it part of an even bigger park, with tables, 
chairs, trees, and a cafeteria. They also want to allow the girls from the school next door to use this playground and park area in the afterschool hours. Though I am very pleased with the location for the playground and the plans for the space surrounding it, I was somewhat disappointed at the lack of preparation thus far. The municipality had only dug 10 of the 32 holes that need to be completed before we can even begin installation of the equipment, and the ground still is not level. Thank God Muhammed was there with me, because he translated my concerns and talked with them about how to remedy some of this situation. They promised to have all the holes dug by Sunday, inshallah, but I still have my doubts. It might not matter much, given that we are still waiting for the playgrounds to arrive at the ANERA storage sites and can't do anything until they do...
A grove of olive trees that we saw on the way back from Beit Anan:
Earlier in the day, I had talked with Kathy Bergen from the Ramallah Friends Center, and she invited us to a potluck at the Friends Center that evening. Apparently, the Center holds weekly potluck dinners that promote connection and discussion between Palestinians and internationals who do work here. After returning from Beit Anan, we hung out for a few hours in Ramallah before going to the potluck then walked down to the Friends Center.
The potluck was great! There were about 14 people there, and everyone there was doing different kind of work in the West Bank, mostly with various NGOs. After the dinner, we all sat around and talked about Gaza, sharing our experiences, thoughts, and feelings about it. One man, a representative of Save the Children UK, talked about how hard it is for NGOs to operate in Gaza right now. He said that Save the Children essentially can't function there because there is no gas for their cars, not enough electricity and water, etc. He talked about a report that British aid organizations were going to release (it has since been released) about this crisis because this is the worst it's ever been in Gaza. Kathy talked about how powerless she feels because she can't do anything for the people she knows there. In response to this, a couple who had lived in Gaza for years and had suffered through some difficult times there told us all that anything we can do to express our solidarity with people there helps, even if it just means communicating that we are thinking about them as they are cut off from the rest of the world. That said, of course, we all felt that real action to force the international community to take note of the situation is ultimately the most important piece of the puzzle. In the course of this very substantive discussion, someone said that she had heard a quote recently that went something like, "The Nakba of 1948 is continuing at a pace that the world can tolerate."
One of the teachers from the Ramallah Friends School talked about her experience discussing the Gaza issue with the primary school students. She told us that one young child said, "What would happen to me if my mother and father died?" This expression of fear and insecurity, of not knowing what could be next, seems so prevalent here. I held back tears as she talked... Another child, a 5th grader, said, "The more I see dead bodies on TV, the less human they seem. They seem like toys." And again, I held back tears. Sometimes children are able to cut to the chase and offer such nuanced analyses, even in the face of such complex situations. I wish we all could take on the eyes of children periodically. Maybe it would make us more humane.
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